Possibly a little closer to controlled fusion

[studiot]

Claimed to be the hottest place on Earth

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-59601560

 

Quote

Nuclear fusion reactor experiment to produce clean energy

 

Nuclear fusion reactor experiment to produce clean energy

 

On an industrial estate just outside Didcot in the south of England, an experiment is taking place that will create temperatures hotter than the Sun.

The BBC's climate editor, Justin Rowlatt, went to see the nuclear fusion reactor in action and to find out what possibilities the technology could hold for generating vast amounts of low-carbon energy.

 

[exchemist]

43 minutes ago, studiot said:

Claimed to be the hottest place on Earth

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-59601560

 

 

This seems to be just another marketing video from fusion researchers. I didn't see any mention of progress.   

We had a thread on this topic some days ago: https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/126240-making-fusion-pay/?tab=comments#comment-1193803

To be honest I am a bit jaundiced now where news items on controlled fusion are concerned. I keep seeing plenty of hype, plenty of "jam tomorrow" - and yet it seems to be still as far away as it supposedly was when I was a child. The discussion in that other thread about Q factors illustrates how misleading some of the claims tend to be.

I'm all for continuing to do the research, because of the size of the potential prize, but realistically it is still decades away and progress is glacially slow. I suppose they need to release these reports occasionally for political reasons, to keep the R&D money flowing in, but I don't think we should be fooled by them. 

 

 

 

[studiot]

44 minutes ago, exchemist said:

This seems to be just another marketing video from fusion researchers. I didn't see any mention of progress.   

We had a thread on this topic some days ago: https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/126240-making-fusion-pay/?tab=comments#comment-1193803

To be honest I am a bit jaundiced now where news items on controlled fusion are concerned. I keep seeing plenty of hype, plenty of "jam tomorrow" - and yet it seems to be still as far away as it supposedly was when I was a child. The discussion in that other thread about Q factors illustrates how misleading some of the claims tend to be.

I'm all for continuing to do the research, because of the size of the potential prize, but realistically it is still decades away and progress is glacially slow. I suppose they need to release these reports occasionally for political reasons, to keep the R&D money flowing in, but I don't think we should be fooled by them. 

 

 

 

 

Yes it is disappointing that we have not yet even passed the first hurdle, that of sustained controlled fusion.

Obviously this needs to be achieved before we can overcome the technological details of extracting worthwhile energies from the process.

We don't yet know what sort of process we will have only that extraction stragegies will necessarily depend on the process.

If the process simply produces heat, it seems most likely that there will be a steam turbine/generator at the end of the chain.

 

But different avenues of possible processes have been explored since Zeta, the first attempt I was aware of.

Knowledge of the then hardly understood processes of Magnetohydrodynamics and Plasma Physics has been greatly enhanced since that time, as have new magnetic methods using superconductors and other better magnetic materials and ignition methods using lasers.
So the research and attempts have not been in vain.

I still wonder if the final solution will not by direct generation by MHD methods.

As to your point about pitching for funds and other backing,
Sadly successive UK governments have been busy dismantling research establishments wholesale and even have a track record of cancelling projects that are working well.
So many enterprises have to function in a stop-go,  stop-go world, never finishing anything.

[swansont]

Not only haven't we reached a sustained reaction, from that other thread it's clear that we aren't anywhere close to that point.

The video has precious little scientific detail in it that indicates we're making much progress.

[Sensei]

2 hours ago, studiot said:

Claimed to be the hottest place on Earth

Journalists like such click-bait, eye-catchy, subjects..

I would ask "for how long?" the hottest place..

If e.g. a proton hits an antiproton, either in a particle collider or as a result of cosmic radiation, at close to the speed of light, the temperature in that case is so high that it is counted in GeV or TeV, not K...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronvolt#Temperature

 

[studiot]

Well I'm sorry I bothered, I won't bother in future.

[exchemist]

2 hours ago, studiot said:

 

Yes it is disappointing that we have not yet even passed the first hurdle, that of sustained controlled fusion.

Obviously this needs to be achieved before we can overcome the technological details of extracting worthwhile energies from the process.

We don't yet know what sort of process we will have only that extraction stragegies will necessarily depend on the process.

If the process simply produces heat, it seems most likely that there will be a steam turbine/generator at the end of the chain.

 

But different avenues of possible processes have been explored since Zeta, the first attempt I was aware of.

Knowledge of the then hardly understood processes of Magnetohydrodynamics and Plasma Physics has been greatly enhanced since that time, as have new magnetic methods using superconductors and other better magnetic materials and ignition methods using lasers.
So the research and attempts have not been in vain.

I still wonder if the final solution will not by direct generation by MHD methods.

As to your point about pitching for funds and other backing,
Sadly successive UK governments have been busy dismantling research establishments wholesale and even have a track record of cancelling projects that are working well.
So many enterprises have to function in a stop-go,  stop-go world, never finishing anything.

On the point about steam raising etc., I learnt something about that from the other thread. In a commercial machine, the torus is to be surrounded by a "breeder blanket" containing Li that intercepts the emitted neutron flux, making tritium, and getting hot in the process. This heat would apparently be conveyed by a coolant to a heat exchanger that can raise steam for a turbogenerator, rather as in a fission power plant. I don't know what the breeder blanket would be made of. Obviously not just lithium, as that melts at 180C.

This breeder blanket concept has not been proved so far, I think, though ITER is apparently going to test some of its possible components. ITER is to be followed by a reactor called DEMO, in which this breeder blanket would be run for real, apparently.    

[studiot]

The reason I mentioned steam driven generators at the end of the exchange line is that we don't have many other feasible generation methods to hook a fusion reactor to.

MHD direct has not yet been made to work, although feasible in theory.

Wind and water turbines, or solar panels are not really suitable.

27 minutes ago, exchemist said:

On the point about steam raising etc.

 

 

[Ken Fabian]

If fusion is so extremely difficult to do at all, doing lots of it reliably at low cost seems a long way off. There is no way we can factor fusion into our clean energy ambitions.

16 hours ago, studiot said:

Wind and water turbines, or solar panels are not really suitable.

Sitting here using solar energy right now (at night btw), I'm inclined to disagree. The Australian Electricity Market Operator believes RE, even without dramatic tech advances, can run most of Australia's energy intensive economy with high reliability and do it with less costs than coal power. Take away wind and solar and there isn't a clean energy transition.

[studiot]

29 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

If fusion is so extremely difficult to do at all, doing lots of it reliably at low cost seems a long way off. There is no way we can factor fusion into our clean energy ambitions.

I didn't say otherwise, did you not read the thread title ?

30 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

Sitting here using solar energy right now (at night btw), I'm inclined to disagree. The Australian Electricity Market Operator believes RE, even without dramatic tech advances, can run most of Australia's energy intensive economy with high reliability and do it with less costs than coal power. Take away wind and solar and there isn't a clean energy transition.

This is completely off topic which is about using fusion energy to generate electricity.

Read my comment you replied to again and you should be able to see that you have misread it.

[exchemist]

28 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

If fusion is so extremely difficult to do at all, doing lots of it reliably at low cost seems a long way off. There is no way we can factor fusion into our clean energy ambitions.

Sitting here using solar energy right now (at night btw), I'm inclined to disagree. The Australian Electricity Market Operator believes RE, even without dramatic tech advances, can run most of Australia's energy intensive economy with high reliability and do it with less costs than coal power. Take away wind and solar and there isn't a clean energy transition.

I think fusion would seen as complementary to the intermittent generation sources, to avoid needing to rely on them for more than, say 50% of the demand, the problem being of course the need for energy storage where intermittent sources are used. How do they store electricity from solar and wind in Australia? 

I agree that we cannot bank on fusion at the moment. For now we need nuclear fission and, in the short term (10-20yrs?) some gas, as coal and oil are phased out. If we do get fusion it won't be for 20years at least, the way things are looking.    

[Ken Fabian]

10 hours ago, studiot said:

Read my comment you replied to again and you should be able to see that you have misread it.

Using wind, water turbines and solar panels... as components of a fusion power plant to turn fusion energy into electricity? I did miss that.

My initial comment wasn't a response to any other comments, just my thoughts.

 

10 hours ago, exchemist said:

How do they store electricity from solar and wind in Australia?

I have Li-Iron-Phosphate batteries at home - more expensive than not having them, but not by much. One more halving of battery costs and nothing will be the same.

So far not a lot of grid scale storage but one very large pumped hydro project is proceeding and there is a lot more investment in batteries than anyone expected.

AEMO's most recent 20 year Integrated system plan, if adopted, would reach close to 95% RE (electricity, with a lot of EV and other extra demand) by 2040. Storage is a big part of that but as AEMO sees it there are other things that can and are being done that reduce the amount of storage, that help lesser amounts of it go further. 

Not my intention to derail the discussion of fusion. My sensitivities around blanket disparagement of renewable energy got triggered, wrongly in this case - but I also think the larger context cannot be avoided and shouldn't. The Why of ongoing development of fusion immediately opens the discussion up to options apart from fusion, if just to compare.

Fusion is worthy of ongoing efforts but so are many other technologies. One would be low cost, ultra safe, mass manufactured modular nuclear power plants - the much hyped SMR... if we'd had those back when climate emerged as a global issue things may have played out differently - something that can be built fast and deliver emissions reductions and political benefits within political timeframes - but they seem as perpetually far off as fusion, always another decade, maybe, more funding needed and not likely to be cheap. Throwing support behind wind and solar hasn't ended up a mistake.

 

Edited December 14, 2021 by Ken Fabian

[studiot]

52 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

Using wind, water turbines and solar panels... as components of a fusion power plant to turn fusion energy into electricity? I did miss that.

My initial comment wasn't a response to any other comments, just my thoughts.

Thank you for listening.

52 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

Throwing support behind wind and solar hasn't ended up a mistake.

It never was a mistake IMHO.

But you missed some tricks out of your list. Geothermal and gravitational sources are both more reliable proven technology with a much greater service life expectancy than either wind or solar (of course both wind and solar rely on the same source).

 

[swansont]

12 hours ago, studiot said:

gravitational sources

Gravitational sources? 

If that means hydroelectric, then the reliability can be impacted by drought conditions, as the US is seeing.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/western-drought-drives-decline-in-hydroelectric-power-generation-180978862/

[studiot]

8 hours ago, swansont said:

Gravitational sources? 

If that means hydroelectric, then the reliability can be impacted by drought conditions, as the US is seeing.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/western-drought-drives-decline-in-hydroelectric-power-generation-180978862/

 

Whilst gravitational sources include some hydroelectricity generation collecting natural rainfall for the lake, no I was referring to tidal generation.

The largest tidal generator in Europe was installed in Orkney a couple of weeks ago.

'Most powerful' tidal turbine starts generating electricity off Orkney - BBC News

also see some older ones (Shetland)

Case study: Nova Innovation - Shetland Tidal Array | Scotland's Marine Assessment 2020

 

Australia has lots of sun, we have lots of tides.

 

[mistermack]

In the aticle that I fist saw on this, they said the hottest place in the Solar System. It's academic, as if it's hotter than the Sun's core, then that will be true. But, from memory, the temperatures achieved at the NIF lazer fusion facility are in the region of hundreds of millions of degrees, whereas here at Didcot they are aiming at 100 million degrees eventually, so I doubt if the "hottest" claim stands up. It's academic really, the temperatures at the NIF are momentary, whereas the Tokamak temperatures will will persist for some minutes, hopefully. 

The Tore Supra tokamak in France holds the record for the longest plasma duration time of any tokamak: 6 minutes and 30 seconds. 

I don't know why they made this announcement, or what's new about it. The only difference that I can make out is that this is a private enterprise. I'm saying that from memory, I can't guarantee the details. 

This is only about four miles from the JET tokamak at Culham, which has set several records for fusion, and I would think would compete for the title of hottest. I was expecting the article to be making some new announcement, but there's really nothing new in it at all.

[studiot]

2 minutes ago, mistermack said:

In the aticle that I fist saw on this, they said the hottest place in the Solar System. It's academic, as if it's hotter than the Sun's core, then that will be true. But, from memory, the temperatures achieved at the NIF lazer fusion facility are in the region of hundreds of millions of degrees, whereas here at Didcot they are aiming at 100 million degrees eventually, so I doubt if the "hottest" claim stands up. It's academic really, the temperatures at the NIF are momentary, whereas the Tokamak temperatures will will persist for some minutes, hopefully. 

The Tore Supra tokamak in France holds the record for the longest plasma duration time of any tokamak: 6 minutes and 30 seconds. 

I don't know why they made this announcement, or what's new about it. The only difference that I can make out is that this is a private enterprise. I'm saying that from memory, I can't guarantee the details. 

This is only about four miles from the JET tokamak at Culham, which has set several records for fusion, and I would think would compete for the title of hottest. I was expecting the article to be making some new announcement, but there's really nothing new in it at all.

 

I'm glad to see someone has the entire history of peaceful fusion at their fingertips.

Not so glad to see they couldn't make better use of it than petty quibbling.

[mistermack]

2 minutes ago, studiot said:

petty quibbling.

I thought I was adding info. It didn't feel like quibbling when I wrote it.

I do have most of the history of fusion at my fingertips though. Just like anyone who has internet access.